Predictable and blandly cozy.
Unremarkable sixth novel from Cook (Summer Blowout, 2008, etc.), who seems to specialize in stories of middle-aged women crossing the sandpits that are their lives.
Noreen Kelly—mid-40s, single, childless, the owner of a perfectly decent house on the Massachusetts shore—has decided to take the buyout that Balancing Act Shoes is offering her. Eighteen months of salary and some career counseling sound pretty sweet, except now Noreen feels not just her job but her whole life is a little redundant. On a whim she buys a load of walking shoes with her employee discount, and soon she finds a walking partner in her neighbor Tess. Strangers until now (but for a brief conversation on the benefits of line-drying clothes), the two meander up to the big house on the hill and, with its owner Rosie, immediately organize the Wildwater Walking Club. Wearing Noreen’s discounted sneakers and pedometers, they surpass 10,000 steps every morning on their beach walk as they air their grievances: teenage daughters (Tess); an overfull plate of responsibilities (Rosie); the general sense of displacement (Noreen). Life-coaching courses have helped Noreen realize that her identity has been too defined by her corporate title. She needs to get a life, and maybe a boyfriend too, in the form of Rick, a fellow traveler in the world of recent unemployment. Meanwhile, the Wildwater Walking Club decides to treat itself to a little vacation. After much bickering, its three members decide on a lavender festival in Washington. A few subplots round out the story: Noreen’s mother comes for a visit and falls for Rosie’s dashing widowed dad; Tess and Noreen become involved in a right-to-air-dry movement; all three women follow the progress of a New Orleans teacher battling cancer who’s struck up an e-mail acquaintance with Tess. None of this raises the fictional temperature to anything above lukewarm.
Predictable and blandly cozy.Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4013-4089-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Voice/Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2009
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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